


Do not spray into eyes i have sprayed you into my eyes

by refur42 (sigurfox)



Series: Leftovers [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst, Depression, M/M, Misery, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Out of Body Experiences, POV Steve, Prophetic Dreams, Self-Hatred, Sickness, Skinny Steve, amputee bucky, the author is very depressed, the narrative is kinda chaotic idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-14 00:19:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10524978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigurfox/pseuds/refur42
Summary: Blackness swirls around in thick clouds, darting this way and that, an ominous living creature. It follows Steve's eyes. Always one step ahead or one step behind. So that Steve would never grasp it with his feeble weary glance. Oh, scandalous. Steve droops his eyelids. Sinking in, reaching up yet another brand new level of dark.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: English is not my native language.

Out of nothingness, from the great nonexistence, large damp flecks and peels of god knows what fall down, slanting and wavering. That, or new pitch black blind spots in his vision?

Mud and mire on the ground cover its hard frostbound body. Asleep until the distant spring.

 _It’s_ _Ragnarök_ _,_ Steve thinks idly. _The doom of the old gods. Where are the new ones? Now’s really the best time to-_

“We could make a balefire there,” Bucky interrupts his useless musings, “But… yet too dangerous. However tempting it is…”

Dexterous and energetic as usual, Bucky jumps down from the ridge of crumpled stones he uses for observing the dead forest beyond. Nowhere near unbalanced. Brisk crafty Bucky. The wind throws a gripeful of dusty snow in his face and snatches the hood off his head.

“Shit,” He mouths, turning away to spit.

It’s been raining a lot lately. The ashen snow moves in narrow grimy streams with the speed of lava beneath their feet. Steve looks out at the wide line of sleet, the colour of umber and slate, marking the space between the town and the forest. The kingdom border.

Today’s raiding not been very productive really, but Bucky finds a small metal container right on the streets and now he extracts it from his backpack, kneels on the pavement and tries to stick his knife through the lid. He looks like a madman stabbing the lid over and over, steel on steel making these horrible noises, which make even half-deaf Steve cringe; again and again, until the tip of the blade scratches the concrete.

Bucky sits back on his haunches and wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Gonna cook ya some charcoal, babe.”

Steve raises an eyebrow behind his huge cracked goggles. In vain of course, he knows his face is unreadable. The hood, the scarf, the goggles. All summoned to protect him from ash and dust. Yet, he’s the one who barely sees, hears, speaks. Steve can’t help but envy. Bucky seems to be immune to the shit circulating thick in the air: he’s eaten a few knots of dust today because his hood keeps falling off. And he’s totally fine.

Steve tried to yell at him for being a reckless ass, but sank into a terrible coughing fit instead, which left his throat burning afterwards. Well, whatever.

Tearing the branches off the remaining sad trees, Steve feels sorry for them. It’s all they’ve got and he deprives them of the last. But Bucky says it’s necessary to gather live twigs. So he does.

 

***

 

When the rain subsides Steve makes a fire outside. By the wall where he drew a picture the day they arrived here. It dulled and smudged.

Steve puts handfuls of black snow in a pot and sets it above the fire. The snow is harsh to touch, with bits of ice in its depth. It spangles, faint. Sort of a little bit mystical. Fire is a bright moving spot among the indistinct filthiness. Steve focuses on it. He takes off his damp gloves and shoves his hands beneath the scarf and iceburns skin on the sides of his neck.

Temperature’s going up, now there’s just black water in the pot. Just like in the river. Steve once knew that in the wildness drinking melted snow is way safer than drinking lake or river water. Is it right? Does it still apply?

He sighs. _What is the point?_

“We’ll make a sand filter for water,” announces Bucky, loud right above his head, and Steve startles. “And pencils for you.”

Steve never hears him approaching, it’s a disaster.

“You...”

“See, coal coats the muscles of the world.”

Bucky adds few more branches to Steve’s scanty pile of wood.

“What are you, a poet?”

“Those are oak, pine and willow. And I'm an engineer. Look,” He extracts a bunch of wire from a pocket and dangles it in front of Steve’s face.

Then he sits down and kisses Steve's scarf-covered cheek. Bucky's face is open and stained with grease. Steve realizes he hasn't seen himself in the mirror for an eternity.

“Now that we eat proper food we gotta start drinking proper drinks. A healthy lifestyle and all that.”

Steve wants to argue or say something sarcastic but his throat itches and it erases the thought from his head. Bucky pats him on the back, affectional. When it’s over he just husks, “Okay.”

Steve takes out a knife from his boot and looks at the blade, turning it that way and this, but it's dull, lusterless, and he can't make out the reflection.

 

***

 

Bucky bends the wire and wraps it around the container, making a hook on top, a handle.

"Nice?"

"Yeah."

"Help me cut these big pieces? No, these first," Bucky points at pine and willow, "We don't need much now, chop off a little…"

Steve nods. He clutches the knife so hard, his knuckles whiten. He doesn't realize he could put his gloves on until the edge of the hilt digs into the pale soft flesh of his hand painfully, coloring it, tearing the thin dry skin. God, to have a hatchet or an ax would be great.

It’s nice to prepare big fire outside while it's quiet and skies don't threaten with another calamity. Steve picks at thin pieces of wood, splitting them some more. It calms him, this - fiddling slowly with tiny work, huddled over. A moment of peace. It feels nice not to cough up his lungs, not to retch his stomach up, not talk, not look around.

Bucky scoops up the splinters and lays them in the metal box, puts the lid on, fixes the wire and hangs it above a good boisterous fire by hook.  

"A crucial element … “ Bucky mutters something to the fire, “… to absorb our impurities …"

He doesn't take his glinting eyes off the cooking spot and, as smoke starts oozing out of the top hole and from under the lid, he grasps small flaming stick from the fire to test the readiness.

After the cooking is finished, he sets the container aside to cool off. When later he checks “the results of his exploratory development”, he takes the biggest piece and snaps it easily in his fist. Grinning, he strews pieces of charcoal into a bag. Blackness smudges on his fingers up to his gloves-covered knuckles.

 

***

 

Inspirited by the skies’ benevolent behavior these days, they set up a tarp shelter against the bowlder.

“Let’s make ourselves a picnic,” Bucky tells Steve, leaning close and brushing his lips to Steve’s ear.

“Uh huh,” mumbles Steve, snorting.

He leans again, Steve thinks he’s about to say something else and gets ready to listen, all attention. But Bucky just kisses Steve’s ear, slowly and tenderly. He doesn't pull away, staying right there, and Steve feels good. The kiss is long, it tickles and in the end Steve cowers, giggling.

And even though the idea of a picnic is stupider than ridiculously stupid, Steve smiles instead of rolling his eyes. And he feels Bucky's lips twitch and stretch into a smile against Steve's ear. It feels so good. Like old times.

Bucky picks up dead leaves and piles them up under the tarp. Kneeling, he rakes them carefully, making a fluffy crunchy round bed. Steve gets down to help. They carry dead spruce paws and pine boughs. It looks like a nest.

Then Bucky falls on his ass in the very centre of the nest and pats the place beside. Steve sits down too. Bucky fishes out the plain plastic bottle of light amber coloured liquid, clear and transparent, from his backpack and lifts it up in the air showing it off triumphantly.

“Apple juice!” He gives the bottle to Steve. He winks, “I smelled it, it really is apple juice. And,” he rummages some more, “Crackers and canned sprats.”  

The wind flaps the tarp canvas a little and steals the leaves from their nest.

 

***

 

They do it all because sometimes it gets way too claustrophobic down here in their foxhole.

They keep a small bonfire right under the trapdoor, which stays opened during calm weather. But when the storm starts, Bucky has to close it and put the fire out. Storms are so wild, the enormous heaps of ash, dirt and snow find their way into their lair and pile up everywhere within an instant.

The basement lies in total darkness. The sleeping bunker, a storage. An icy igloo. A cryo container, a dead fish tank.

_Home._

Remote bustle of the hurricane. At last. Steve hears it. It must be awfully loud then. Moans of iron outside. Bucky's shambling steps inside. He sweeps the dirt into a corner in the dark, rustling like a mouse.

Steve doesn’t understand how Bucky can endure this fraught wall of sound. He clears his throat and comments, “It's so loud...” But either Bucky doesn’t answer or Steve doesn’t hear the reply.

When Bucky lies down, Steve places a palm on his chest and feels how he shudders in times with metal shrieks and wind howls. What are they, those sounds? What do they have to be to make Bucky shudder?

 

***

 

Next morning he wakes shivering. He was falling. Was he, right? Has he slept at all? His head is heavy as a rock. The thin crescent - opening into the outer world - is glowing. Steve blinks a few times. What if the sun is back? He climbs up to have a peep.

It's snowing, and it's not black. It's a light grey colour. Making its way down, oblique, along the sharp fangs of the labyrinth town walls, hungry ridges of aforetime tabernacle roofs, like the snow he knew once upon a time.

A memory evoked. Invoked maybe. Number it, narrate it and remember.

Blizzard shimmers against the overcast. It flares. Iridescent against the dreary. It's been awhile since Steve saw a colour serene as this. It's divine. Celestial. Festive. Maybe it's the sign.

The long opaque barrier of the hill. What season is now? It feels like summer. The strong smell of sulfur hangs over the street.

Bucky hugs him from behind, places his chin on Steve's shoulder. One firm arm wrapped around Steve's middle. Strong tender kind Bucky.

Grey spiny snowflakes cool the skin. But they stand watching. Two beggars stuck in a ghost town. 

 

***

 

Bucky talks way less than he did before, but when he does it's always way too enthusiastic. Exaggerated cheerfulness. It's all false bravado. It makes Steve feel both grateful and bitter. Although, yes, it's quite understandable… He guesses hearing his own voice all the time is annoying, with his companion being unable to reply properly and all. This awful enormous fatigue, that settled under the skin, sprouts deep roots. Steve can’t help but write it on his own accord. Who would want to talk to a log? That is what Steve is, he just lies there, freezing, stiff, silent, immobile save for the tremors, peering through narrowed eyes. A creepy presence in the dark, half-alive, half-dead.

It hurts thinking about what he’s become. He closes his eyes and dives into the ongoing pity party of his mind.

When he opens his eyes again, monsters lurk by Bucky’s sides. They reach out to the small fire he keeps, enveloped in sorrow.

_Shadows crawl from distant corners to your head._

Steve springs to full alert and his whole body convulses as hot rush of panic makes its way from heart to toes and fingertips, instant and powerful like an electric current.

"Bucky," Steve squeals brokenly, "Someone’s there… something..."

Bucky jerks and sits up. He grabs a flaming stick from the bonfire and leaps to his feet looking around, chest heaving, fire hissing as he turns.

Steve sees the orange flashes on black. It flies like a Chinese dragon.

No one here.

Steve rubs his eyes. The monsters are behind his eyelids. And he can't just rub them away.

Bucky lowers the torch back into its place.

"I’m sorry," mumbles Steve.

Blackness swirls around in thick clouds, darting this way and that, an ominous living creature. It follows Steve's eyes. Always one step ahead or one step behind. So that Steve would never grasp it with his feeble weary glance. Oh, scandalous. Steve droops his eyelids. Sinking in, reaching up yet another brand new level of dark.

He lies very still. Pushes his face into the blankets smothering a moan. Trying his damndest to ease the headache, blooming on from behind his eyes. Little spears puncture his eyeballs. Dainty on a skewer.

 

***

 

By the river Bucky gathers gravel. Few feet away Steve pours handfuls of sand into his bag.

Climbing back onto the embankment from the lowland river beach, Bucky vibrantly leads the way. Warms Steve's palm in his. The hardness of Bucky’s hand is pleasant. The ragged edges of his fingerless glove. Calloused pads of his fingertips. Steve likes it when Bucky strokes his hair with his large harsh hand even though before he couldn’t stand to be pampered, taken care of. He used to like to play tough. None of that anymore.

Steve follows, stumbling. They set a fast pace at first and soon Steve struggles to breathe. They stop for a moment.

When Steve feels better their gazes meet and he can't help but feel embarrassed but Bucky’s eyes above the scarf crinkle at him a little and Steve crinkles his own in return.

They walk into other houses while the weather is fine. Exploring the town, to search for more food and useful things. Further and further each time. They learn certain paths and ways. Routes become routine. The ruins have turned the once geometrical town into a maze with ever-changing obstacles. Their new hometown. They find their safe paths between the litter, garbage, remnants of everything. Memorizing the close lands and little by little exploring the far.

The old embankment glistens with ice. Steve slips on slithery, perfectly smooth surface, and he grabs Bucky's sore shoulder by accident, squeezes his stump painfully. Bucky hisses, cowering unintentionally.

“Damn...”

They both nearly fall. Shady waters run slow carrying thick ice plates with frayed edges. Dark blue twilight crawls out of the slimy river’s womb.

Time to go home.

They stand still against the hastening wind. Steve strokes Bucky's stump apologetically. Bucky lets him.

The wind blows and flings the litter about.

 

***

 

“Eh, if only to get some seeds somewhere…”

While Bucky savvies what else they need for the filter, standing on the porch and staring at the distance, scratching his chin thoughtfully, Steve walks around the house stamping and poking the stony earth with his toe-caps. Probing. He squats down and touches the ground with his fingers, tentative. It's like touching granite. He crawls around for some time in search for some soft spots, and just when his back starts slowly to give in to the nagging ache, here it is, a patch of pebbly promising-looking soil. Soil? Steve digs his gloved rigid fingers into the rigid ground. It resists every move. It doesn’t want to be disturbed. No. False alarm. Mud, stones, and congealed, stockstill stratum again, hibernating until better times.

The wind hits his eyes in goggles but he still squints, reflex. His eyes water. Oh it’s good. Steve sheds tears like skins a flint. Not enough relief, not enough misery. He wants to take off his goggles. He wants to take off his gloves but he's sure his hands would literally fall off. He's scared. He focuses on Bucky, of who they were earlier, so long long long ago, eons ago… And tears do stream down, get caught on the rim of the goggles. Only then Steve is satisfied.

Oh Bucky...

This earth under his palms is infinite, endless, immortal. It is frozen to the core, yes. So what? The earth experienced it a million times before, a minor freeze every year, a major one every few thousand years.

Sooner or later it will wake up again – a chief shift it will be, a new era – the earth will present, reveal itself and its new fabulous rules and laws. And the mold will wake up and give birth. One day.

But Steve’s bones, Bucky’s bones - first bloodied, then dried up, with medulla, then empty - will strip out of flesh, will desiccate, dilapidate, burst wide open. Fragile like plastic, like cardboard, they will crumble and the pieces of what once were Steve and Bucky will freeze into the icy ground, sink in and intergrow too. It will sleep too. Sleep, waiting for the chance to give its soul to something else. And once upon a time the stagnation will end, and light will find its way into the world again, the gentle warm breeze will return or a crystal-clear white storm will rise, pure snow will fall down. Something will gather up the remnants of you and throw you onto the rocks, into the sea, blue and vibrant; black claws will pick you up and with a shriek a bird will carry you across the blooming lands, the big stands of spruce and pine, across the space filled with things undimmed, perspicuous; past the new lives caught up in one good old great cycle again.

 

***

 

That grey snow apparently was just a single event effect, so the euphoria is over. Storms are getting tenfold stronger. They sting, taste awful too.

Steve and Bucky fear the house's frail walls will fall and block the entrance to the basement and they will stay locked inside.

Something bangs into the trapdoor. Steve senses it in the air, the vibrations. They sit huddled together in the distant corner, in total darkness, like wretched mice or roaches. Steve's good ear is pressed against Bucky's shoulder. To save himself from the terrific rumbling. But he knows the metal bangs outside when the wind carries and throws the stuff everywhere. He reads it in the way Bucky tenses.

Steve’s shaking. Bucky says, “Try to sleep.”

Despite being so long on the road, having a shelter now doesn’t help: Steve sleeps so bad. In fact, he can’t quite sleep anymore. Sleep teases him like waves on the shore; is something that flickers around, splatters close, but never lays over. Never having enough mercy to let him zone out. He immerses in for one second and bobs up the next. In and out of a sick half-slumber. It is exhausting.

Trembling, Steve tries to cover himself, to settle down more comfortably. Every day and night. He can't figure out what is wrong, why can't he get warm.

He slides down on the floor, presses his face to Bucky's thigh. Bucky’s hand on the back of his neck.

Steve lies motionless. Later his mind, staggering through the night, catches on elusive imponderable… sobs? He lifts his head a little and calls out quietly. Bucky doesn’t reply. Silence of a tomb fills the space around.

 

***

 

Rouse and there's darkness. Steve wakes up, his head aches not so bad as it did yesterday. It's the first thing he notices. The second is that he can clearly smell fire. He turns his head and, yeah, that is right, he can hear it crackling.

Eyes feel like full of large grains of dust. Seeds shoved under his eyelids. Why don’t they tear through the thin skin. Why don’t they sprout. Steve shudders. He pries his eyes open. A wee bit. Then he rubs them.

"Hey you, morning," Bucky calls out from across the room, noticing Steve squirming.

Steve opens his eyes again wider blinking rapidly.

Fire doesn’t come into view. He is disoriented. He turns his head. But there is no fire. Just blackness.

He blinks harder. "Buck?"

"Mmm?"

"Buck, w-why can’t I see you?"

"What?"

"Buck, I don’t see anything..."

A shuffling. A hand on his shoulder. "Steve, don’t panic, it's just too dark here."

"Bucky," Steve grabs onto something in the blackness. The empty sleeve of Bucky's parka?

"Look at me, is there something over my eyes? Is there something blocking the view?"

"No, there isn’t. It's just dark, Stevie."

"But the fire, it is here, I sense it. It means the trapdoor must be open. I used to see fire, see your shape against the walls. But now…"

"Come on, let's move a bit."

"Are my eyes closed or open? Buck?"

Strong hand snatches Steve's wrist, firm but careful, preventing him from clawing at his face. "Calm down, calm down. Step here. Do you see anything now?"

Steve stands in the darkness, uselessly blinking and turning his head. Complete darkness. He feels so small, smaller than ever before. Panic grips his throat. He can’t see anything anymore.

It's hard to breathe. He gasps but no air enters. He sinks down on his knees missing the words Bucky tells.

Warmth and strength embraces him when Bucky settles besides him murmuring, "Shh, shh..." in his ear, hugging him, palm wide between his shoulder blades.

"Can’t... breathe... Buck," wheezes Steve. His heart pounds in his chest like mad. He makes a few slow long gasps. "Can't see anymore..." Low in his throat a large stone sits. Not letting him breathe, not letting him swallow, not letting him cry.

He fades, deceased, rotten.

"Buck...”

"Shhh, it is going to be okay, we'll fix it, Steve, somehow, I promise. Shh..."

They sway on the floor, clutching at each other.

 

***

 

It's like a nightmare he can't wake up from. It lasts and lasts and it doesn't even feel real. It can't be real. Empty world. Where are the people? Billions of them. Where are the cities and their formic fuss? Where is the sun?

The most terrifying thing is that whether he opens or closes his eyes there is no difference. He closes his eyes and touches his fingertips to his eyelids to check if they are really closed. Because sometimes it seems to him he can't differ one blackness from another. He covers his face with the scarf even home.

It's so horribly disorientating. He doesn't know what is around. He can't position himself in the world. He can't get up. He lies with his eyes closed, cocooned in his disability, tight and hard. It's like time has stopped.

Pathetically, he keeps hoping that it's just a glitch in his system. That soon, in an instant he will take off the scarf, open his eyes and see. See Bucky by the fire, working on his filter or some other useful contraption, working wonders, see him smile at him, warily, but genuinely, and his heart will warm and he will be calm. He would gather whatever strength there still is in his inoperative body to get up and help him, get up and do something, free of all consuming despair. Oh but it takes so much fuel to wilt.

When that one thing happens, you start wondering, beating yourself: what if it didn't happen, oh if only that one thing didn't happen, if only it was different now, I would be different too. But it's never true. It’s never just one thing. You either get a grip on yourself or whine, no matter what's happening to you.

"You're too hard on yourself," says Bucky, "Stop it."

 

***

 

"I can't go outside."

"Why the hell not."

Steve would stare him down if he could, "I can't see."

"So? It's not like you can't walk. Eyes are not legs."

For a moment Steve clams up, rendered speechless. Bucky, his Bucky, the waves dash against him as if he’s a breakwater.

"You… You know exactly why I can’t…"

"I don't know anything. Come on."

Steve is being hauled onto his feet. His scarf being adjusted on his face. He wants to see Bucky's face. The stone grows in his throat again, painful. It's been just one day. An eternity. He's afraid to forget his lover’s face. Oh, eternity. Then another one, stretched, extended beyond measure eternity, from now on, forever, every day till the day he dies. However many or few days are left, it's too long. Too long.

Steve’s eyelashes brush the edge of the scarf. Bucky covers his entire face.  Then he disappears for a moment. And Steve just stands there like a doll with no will. Like he is in parallel universe. Bucky returns, puts goggles on him. Like it matters now. Disappears again.

"Here,” Bucky ties them together with a thin rope around their waists and takes Steve’s hand, "Let's go have a stroll, it's barely snowing."

As they take a walk, Steve counts steps and turns.

 

***

 

Finally, the salutary sleep. It's there. It swallows him whole, plunges him deep.

In the thick compressed air of his home the taupe dust lingers. It dwells here, invincible, unshakable in the dead stillness of Bucky and Steve’s sleep.

Bucky is on his side, curled up, his forehead pressed to Steve's. Lying like this their bodies form a heart, distorted and cracked.

The seven-limbed spider.

It's dark, but Steve can make out all the shadows, contours, shapes. Clear and precise. His eyes are sharp and quick. Everything comes into focus and he almost can’t bear it.

Steve raises his hand expecting the dust to stir but nothing happens.

He’s not here.

He moves around. Moves up.

The web of the town’s streets unfolds before him. This caliginous day is way lighter than he remembers such to be. Seeing the town from this angle is strange. But he recognizes their paths through the destroyed thoroughfare and embankment, lanes, alleyways... In one swipe his gaze takes everything it lands on in, imprinting it in his memory. He tries his best to memorize. He wishes he could engrave it all upon the walls of his mind.

Burnt rare forest beyond paint the horizon in shades of black and brown Steve didn’t know exist. This world is still colourful in its own limited way. Trees wave their poor crowns, bow under the weight of the planet’s grieve to the gods unknown.

He fears to look into the black river. Obsidian stains sail and glimmer on its ravenous surface.

The thoughts of old days smear in one indistinguishable picture. Like it hasn’t even happened to him. Never. It's all been made up.

This sad world under him is everything they ever had.

Steve hates waking up. It's like diving, only in fast backrolling. Raising from the bottom of the deepest ocean. Then the pain returns. Darkness. Cold. He moves experimentally. It's hard, but staying immobile is harder. His all body is stiff. Steve stretches out a hand in search for Bucky. He’s not here.

He turns his head. “Buck?” He whispers into the murk.

“Here,” Bucky yells from across the room habitually, “How are you feeling?”

 _Like skin is been pulled too tight over my sore skeleton._ Steve grunts. “Fine. You?”

“Come ‘ere, hold it for me, will ya.”

Emaciated body under emaciated blankets. Steve disentangles himself of multiple thin layers, crawls to the voice. Bucky does it on purpose. Making him do stuff. Move. More than before. Apparently, so that Steve would not lose his mind. Making him believe he is still useful, valuable, needed.

Steve holds out his hands. Bucky gives him something. Steve doesn’t care what it is. Whatever Bucky needs.

 

***

 

“So! We’re making a water filter,” Bucky announces, elated.

He sets his supplies. He proclaims his every step because he wants Steve to participate. Because Bucky’s loud voice in Steve’s ear is how Steve chips in. Getting any idea of what is happening nearby is how he chips in.

“Here is what we have. Plastic bottle, the one which marvelous juice we were feasting on, remember? Um… then my magical knife, buttercloth, a pot, charcoal, bags of sand and gravel annnd… another pot.”

Shuffling, clinks of pots.

“Here, hold the bottle for me,” Bucky places Steve’s hands on the bottle lying on the floor in front of him, “Careful, I’m gonna cut the bottom inch.”

Steve looks up, squints and blinks, he can imagine Bucky’s eyes glowing with fervor now. The picture comes in such heart-wrenching lucidity. He grips the bottle with both hands, and Bucky starts to cut slowly.

Then Bucky spends a shitload of time meddling with the cap trying to stab a hole in it before nearly stabbing his own knee instead and asking Steve for help. A blind person with a knife working by touch under one-armed man guidance. Steve’s hands tremble so he’s one hell of a craftsman too. Those are hands of an artist, he thinks bitterly. He must be precise. But he lost it too. Everything is gone. Gone, gone, gone.

The absurdity of the situation hits him, and suddenly a clapperclaw laughter rumbles its way up from his sore throat, and Bucky must be having a heart attack now, he’s saying something, but Steve can’t hear, because he laughs and laughs until tears roll down his face. When he calms down a little he realizes Bucky’s been laughing too.

It's draining and makes his hands shake more. But he loves the weird ridicule vibe coming off Bucky.

He finally pocks a wry nick in the cap and returns it to Bucky whose delight is totally so not proportional to the result.

“Who cares if it’s nice and round or wry and shitty? No one,” he says philosophically, tightening the cap over the bottle held between his legs. “Perfect.”

He shoves the crumpled pieces of buttercloth in it. Bags of charcoal, sand and gravel being dragged across the floor. They pour sand above the charcoal layer. Then goes the gravel.

“Okay, now we’re gonna use our pot… Damn,” Bucky fumbles a little uncertain, as if he forgot something, “All right, fuck it. Hold it like that.”

Bucky places a filter in Steve’s hands and kisses Steve’s chapped lips, quick. Steve doesn’t have time to kiss back. “Hey!” He protests.

But Bucky is already busy pouring water slowly into the filter.

It takes about seven minutes for water to drip into the pot. It’s a long process. Bucky says they should “refine upon the invention”. Cheeky highly educated bastard daring throwing phrases like that in a world like that. Steve huffs out a wee sneer.

“Hmm well, it’s not as clear as I expected… Maybe we should go a few times. How are your hands?”

“Fine.”

“Sure?“

“Yeah, it’s fine, Buck.”

“Okay.”

 

***

 

Steve dreams. Moves through the gale. Proceeds forward in time. The worldline of him runs on and on, a tiresome continuation without meaning. The rampage around, it roars and even time gets caught in its ferocious dance. It's dark, almost pitch dark. He’s never seen a storm like that.

He hardly makes out the shape of Bucky on the ground. Crouching by the warehouse. Unable to move. Because the wind slaps him, presses to the wall, piling up ashy snow and mud on and around him.

A block away Steve finds himself. His replica’s eyes are jet-black gaping voids. Steaming a whole lot of different darkness, like a lantern’s inverted light, and therefore indomitable. He tries to crawl despite everything.  

Bucky is by the warehouse. Steve approaches and hugs him but his hands go through. He wishes once again he could shield him. Something pulls at him but he can’t leave now.

Bucky needs help. But the tether between dream and reality clarifies, makes itself tangible and weighty. He smells bonfire in the lair.

_No, not now, he must save Bucky…_

The dream shakes and starts to fade away, it becomes transparent, then blurs and shunts. So far away. Bucky’s shape loses edges. Boundaries collapse, clear view is replaced with fatigue and pain again. Blackness.

The smell of burned wood, and Bucky’s voice, panicky, right in his ear, “Steve! Steve, please wake up! Steve,”

“Ugh… Buck?”

It’s a ghost of a word stuck behind his teeth. He coughs and tries again, raspy and anyway quiet as a breeze in still weather, “W-what, what happened?”

“God, I’ve been trying to wake you up for like an hour! I didn’t know what to do, what to think-“

“An hour?”

“-thank goodness you’re awake. I… I made breakfast and… wanted to wake you up but-“

His voice wavers into a bare sob, and Steve feels Bucky’s forehead press against his chest. Steve raises his arms and wraps them weakly around him.

The dream, relegated to the background so fast, becomes a one second long cut-out from an old forgotten movie, a tattered fragment of a tape.

 

***

 

 _I’m turning into a fucking mutant or something._ His stomach, so disaccustomed to clear water, apparently considers it a menace.

No one should watch their loved one in such a state, hear those atrocious sounds, wheezing, catching air in his mouth, shoving it down his throat in long desperate gasps as if air is a solid thing. Arms flailing helplessly, indignantly grasping onto his powerless scared friend, thereby condemning him to guilt and shame. It’s just wrong. It's all so wrong. And Steve feels sorry for himself, for Bucky, for the whole wretched planet and all the wasted time and… Another coughing on the verge of passing out, when Steve is well damn sure in a second he's gonna spit his insides out… and he can breathe again. When it's over he's afraid to move. Lies down exhausted. Turns away from Bucky, curls up on his left side… he wants to stop existing. He's trembling and feels so fragile. He imagines if Bucky touches him now he'll dissolve.

“…I want to die,” mutters Steve, in secret unwitting hope expecting Bucky to reassure him, as always.

But to his dismay Bucky whispers back, “I want to die too…”

It’s on the brink of his hearing capabilities, but the inevitable certainty that he heard it right leaves no place for wishful thinking. Hearing it from his best friend, his lover, his Bucky, comprehending the fact itself is scarier and more painful than a million diseases. Guilt overflows his guts, like internal bleeding, and he forces out, “I'm sorry…”

“Don’t… None of it is your fault.”

Bucky sounds so imperturbable. Steve sighs, his breath comes out shaky. “And yet…”

 

***                                               

 

Steve is certain he’ll never get used to blindness. He counts steps like one would tell beads. This time they don’t have time to walk back home or even find a reliable shelter among the ruins. The storm comes, while they’re on their usual raid on a day when nothing has foreboded even an arbitrarily weak drizzle.

The wind hits so unexpected and strong. High and powerful tsunami of all the particles - the milled building blocks of reality – smites like an avalanche and sweeps away the earth from Steve and Bucky’s feet. They both fall down and Steve loses balance, loses Bucky's hand, before he can realize and embrace the feeling of being dragged across the ground. The outcry gets stuck in Steve’s throat as his whole body explodes in pain.

The rope pulls up, stretches, but then another brutal gush sends him tumbling and rolling on the ground. The next moment something whooshes an inch from Steve's face. Steaming hot, too close. Steve pulls at the rope and fumbles for its the ruptured end.

Dust specks dig into his body, cut through the fabric. He manages to scramble up on his knees and before he can throw himself into the panic mode, Bucky’s hand lifts him all the rest way up.

“We gotta get home somehow, as quick as possible!”

It’s not very far. But on their way back home there’s a lot of open space or naked walls, feeble skeletons of buildings, incapable of saving them from the wind and debris. Such wind could destroy everything what yet remains.

"Let’s go. Careful." And with that Bucky drags Steve along with himself, gripping his shoulder to the point of white-hot pain.

Steve only counts to ten, stumbling through the whirlwinds with a strain of struggling to walk underwater, but another tremendous hit descends like night.

One great howl owns the entire known universe. Steve sees the place in his mind, sees where they are and where they should go. He checks for the number of steps, calculating the distance and possible obstacles. Bucky’s made  a mistake. Leads them in the wrong direction. Doubled over under the nature’s violent attack, Steve shakes his hand in Bucky's grip, but Bucky just keeps on and on, holding tight.

Something lumbers by, the thunder erupts right above their heads. Ringing in his ear. They both stop, the wall of air, heavy with its unalterable burden of ash, makes them stagger backwards. Abruptly, Bucky drags Steve down. Falling? Another thunderbolt, and Steve screams, he knows he does but detects no sound but one of rampant storm around.

"Everything… collapsing…"

When the pressure decreases a little, Steve turns and holds onto Bucky’s shoulders. Fumbles for his hood and drags him down to his lips, tries to scream as loud as he can in his friend's face. "Bucky, we missed our turn. We need to go back!"

Once again, Steve thinks it’s like walking through the ever changing labyrinth. How can they find a way in such a calamity? Maybe the map in his head is already invalid, out of date.

"We missed our turn!" He repeats.

"Why so sure? How do you know?"

_I've already been there._

By now Steve is convinced the wind is not a soulless creature. The Wind intentionally wants to kill them. Slam them against the walls, drag across the earth, lift in the air and then let go, disappearing with an impious laughter.

"Damn, I can't see anything... It’s so dark, Steve, pitch dark!"

They back away and this time Steve leads. The wind launches on them again and all of a sudden Steve’s on the ground and hand uselessly paws over thick air.

_No._

"Bucky! Bucky, where are you?" And then he’s being hauled forward against his will, without Bucky.

No no no. Steve fails at catching on to something, anything. Everything around seems liquid, unstable, harsh and barbed, and Steve can’t do anything until the wind decides to let go of him and subside. It still roars though and even if he had a voice he couldn’t scream down the storm. What to do? He remembers the way, he can at least try to crawl home. But Bucky can't, he doesn’t know the way in the darkness. The storm will kill him if Steve leaves him. But how to find each other now when they’re both practically blind?

So he crawls back facing the wind.

He remembers the dream. He never believed in prophetic dreams or this kind of shit but it’s all he has now. According to his dream, Bucky’s stuck somewhere hear the warehouse. If his stepcounts are right... Steve leaves calculations unfinished, ideas unforged, thoughts ripped mid-words. He must be there. This dream is true. Or they both die today.

_Isn’t it what they both crave for?_

Somehow he must reach the warehouse, and fate seems to show mercy on Steve because out of the blue memory unfolds everything in such deadening clarity. It’s like remembering scenes from a movie, like following the instructions. The wind tears the scarf off and cuts into his face. But he doesn’t care, he grits his teeth and carries on.

His palm finds one wall, another, third, the next one isn’t where it should be,  it’s just a gap there. Wrong way or just a new destruction? Steve counts the steps, it must be close, just a few more.

On his knees Steve plasters himself to the old warehouse wall, moves slowly along it. The wind pushes at him hard, aiming to compress, to strangle, to crush. It hurts his chest, being pressed against the stone like that. He tries to grope around the wall, searching for Bucky. In the dream he was crouching low. Somewhere close.

His heart jumps and he wants to laugh as relief floods over him, almost making him dizzy with happiness, when he discern Bucky’s voice among the storm’s sounds.

And in a several moments Steve’s hand ends up in Bucky’s again, Bucky’s proclaims to the universe, “Steve Rogers… You… I swear!” He laughs a little, “Are a miracle.”

 

***

 

A rain of dust enters the bunker with them. It forms a huge pile under the open trapdoor where usually their fire sits. Steve lands onto it like a sack of bones. He doesn’t even have strength for a groan as pain blooms in long acute waves all over his body.

Once the trapdoor is firmly closed, Bucky strikes a match. “Oh, Stevie, your face...”

Steve’s face is numb. He touches it with his freezing fingers. They disobey, feel foreign, alien. Moving so odd. His face is wet and sticky. Steve knows. A faint barely there smell of blood. The goggles are still on, covered in dust.

"Um, okay, don’t worry… You’ve got a few cuts, that’s all." Bucky sounds so much calmer this time, but Steve knows this calmness is fake.

And at that Steve smiles even though it hurts. He doesn’t care at all, while Bucky here cares for his feelings, making his voice sound like it’s not a big deal. But Steve doesn’t care even if his entire face is off. A blind half-deaf half-numb person wouldn’t care. 

"Let’s patch you up."

The thing that worries Steve more is that he can’t check Bucky over. Probably in need of some patching himself, Bucky ignores his own troubles. It’s always has been that way.

“Do… me a favour,” Steve is surprised how much energy the process of speaking consumes, “Ugh… patch yourself first.”

The hurricane bellows through the night, and it feels like the end of the world again. But despite everything, with the sun rising somewhere behind miles and miles of seamless overcast, the new day still comes in blissful quiet.

 


End file.
